08/26/05
Jack Hamilton
Maryville TN
I have been giving a lot of thought to the on going saga of Cindy Sheehan and her protest. I can’t help but think of my own now deceased mother. It has been more than thirty six years but I still remember just like it was last week. The night I told my parents that I was being shipped to Vietnam. We were on our front porch sitting in a porch swing. I remember the anguish on her face the tears from a woman that never cried that much. I was the fourth of seven children. You have heard the feminist talk of strong women, this little woman just barely over five feet could have taught them something about strong women. Her strength had been forged living through the depression and watching her young husband sail off to battle in the South Pacific during WW11 while she waited with two children praying for his safe return. My fathers face was grim as well because he knew what was in store for me. He, like all my ancestors, have fought for this country and he dreaded it for me. Just as I dread it for these young men I see leaving now.Despite her anguish and her fear Mom did not offer to sneak me to Canada or run over me with a car. Besides, she couldn’t drive. I am sure she loved me just as much as Cindy loved Casey Sheehan. She also loved this country; she respected this country as well. Maybe that is the difference between her and Cindy Sheehan. This country had provided the bounty that a family of nine needed to sustain it’s self. She respected a country that allowed her husband with a third grade education to educate himself and become a manager at a large railroad company. A country that allowed her and my Dad to go as far as their
dreams and abilities would take them. I do know this she loved and respected me enough that she would never have dishonored me or what I sacrificed for this country the way Cindy Sheehan has dishonored Casey.
Mom watched me struggle through the years with wounds I received in Vietnam. Not once did she blame the president. Nor did she curse the country with the words that it was not worth fighting or dying for. I can’t imagine how Cindy or others like her grew up with out love for this country but most of all with no respect for a nation that has provided so much for her. Whose very laws and Constitution protects her right to hate it and to refer to those very people that killed her son as freedom fighters. I would like to see her living in a country that the killers of her son would create. Would these Moslem murders stand by and allow her to make the same comment about their country? I don’t think so. Would they allow her to set up a protest camp and call their leader liar and other names. Calling these killers of her son freedom fighters could not have disrespected or dishonored Casey more.I would like to ask Cindy Sheehan if the people that killed her son were freedom fighters. Then what was Casey? Was Casey then a dupe of an administration that just wanted to wage war because that had nothing better to do? I believe Casey Sheehan was smarter than his mother gives him credit for.
President George W Bush respects and honors Casey more than his own mother does. He knows that Casey was fighting terrorists to establish freedom in a country that had suffered enough. He died trying to establish a foot hold for the basic human rights in the Middle East that will effect every man woman and child who hopefully can enjoy what we take for granted. Other than making Casey’s death the end she should be trying to make it the beginning of hope and freedom for the people of that region free from the killers that want to create and maintain an Islamic hell right here on earth.
SondraK, Lympian Slayer 
